Before you flame me, this is just how I personally feel and wanted to here some thoughts from others.

From everything I've ever seen this is a better picture of what it looks like if you stop valuing one particular market over all others (cough cough NYC) and take into account all of the schools ability nationwide. I might do something like make Stanford and Penn lowercase letters for each of their groups. Stanford because it's rep does seem to wane a bit outside of Cali, while H and Y's reputations don't wane anywhere. In addition, H and Y really seem to have S when it comes to Supreme Court clerkships and COA clerkships outside of California plus academia. Penn because it seems to be slightly behind NMBV when it comes to it's reputation amongst lawyers and outside of the northeast. I totally agree with putting Duke and NU ahead of GULC and Cornell. Duke and NU have been significantly out placing those two schools enough for them to merit a higher spot than GULC and Cornell. This ordering also comes closer to aligning with the rep scores that US News releases as well.

TBF, in the Mountain West firm bios I've seen, the NYU, CHI, CLS people tend to have a lower class rank and less prestigious resume stuff than the MVP people, leading me to believe firms will consistantly go deeper at the T-6 even far away from NYC.

Also, Penn lowercase? WTF? I'd take it over MVPB in a (1/2) hearbeat. Ivy, + best in plenty of buisness and law related specialties + higher rank than MVP = awsome.

McNabb wrote:I totally agree with putting Duke and NU ahead of GULC and Cornell. Duke and NU have been significantly out placing those two schools enough for them to merit a higher spot than GULC and Cornell. This ordering also comes closer to aligning with the rep scores that US News releases as well.

Cornell places just as well as Duke/NU, and both Cornell and GULC have higher reputation scores than NU, so I don't see how this makes sense.

Fox, you may be selling NU short in terms of national placement. I would argue that they place equally as well nationally as do VMPB! Indeed, in a couple of surveys, NU ranks #4 overall in terms of big law placement.

McNabb wrote:I totally agree with putting Duke and NU ahead of GULC and Cornell. Duke and NU have been significantly out placing those two schools enough for them to merit a higher spot than GULC and Cornell. This ordering also comes closer to aligning with the rep scores that US News releases as well.

Cornell places just as well as Duke/NU, and both Cornell and GULC have higher reputation scores than NU, so I don't see how this makes sense.

McNabb wrote:I totally agree with putting Duke and NU ahead of GULC and Cornell. Duke and NU have been significantly out placing those two schools enough for them to merit a higher spot than GULC and Cornell. This ordering also comes closer to aligning with the rep scores that US News releases as well.

Cornell places just as well as Duke/NU, and both Cornell and GULC have higher reputation scores than NU, so I don't see how this makes sense.

I like it. Breaking schools down in terms of "who's the best school?" isn't that useful when looking at legal education from a broad perspective. Clerkship =/= Biglaw =/= Academia =/= National Prospects for almost all of the T14. It's not particularly convenient, but there are strengths and weaknesses to each school (except for Y, maybe H, and maybe S) in each category listed. I'd say anti-GTown trolling but I think we all know that's not true

McNabb wrote:I totally agree with putting Duke and NU ahead of GULC and Cornell. Duke and NU have been significantly out placing those two schools enough for them to merit a higher spot than GULC and Cornell. This ordering also comes closer to aligning with the rep scores that US News releases as well.

Cornell places just as well as Duke/NU, and both Cornell and GULC have higher reputation scores than NU, so I don't see how this makes sense.

No, but it gives an idea of how schools stand relative to one another. In the absence of more current data, this seems better than simply relying on the hearsay that passes for TLS wisdom lately. There's really no data (yet) to support the assumption that Cornell has been hit harder than its (formerly?) peer schools, so we shouldn't be stating it as fact.

Y (undisputed #1)H (weaker numbers and yield than Y)S (weaker numbers and less national than HY)---CCN (weaker placement than CC)---MVPB (weaker non-CA placement than MVP)---DN (strong placement on par with MVPB)C (weakest numbers of the T14)G (weakest placement of the T14)